Caterina Albano

We could compare this instance of feeling unable to escape our biographical objects to the example of Barthes’ bone, which he had to discard ceremoniously to be able to let it go from his drawer and his psyche: ‘In this case, the autotopographical landscape, having become a haunting presence or witness of unbearable meanings, cannot be left to stand but must be transformed or destroyed to remove its reflective gaze’ . Perhaps in this way, the bone was the object that haunted him most from the collection in his drawer, as it was the one he had to act on in this way to be able to truly lay it to rest.

In an interview, Christian Boltanski relays an anecdote from his youth where he speaks about a pair of shoes that long held the shape of his
grandfather’s feet after he had passed away. The object, now separate from its owner and devoid of its utilitarian use has come to stand for something very different: ‘such objects become, after years of use, integrated so inextricably with one’s psychic body that they cannot be replaced or removed without a subversion of the physical body itself’ . The etymology of the word trace refers back to the French form ‘track’, stemming from the Greek root ‘ichnos’, meaning a track made by a footstep. The shoes, that once functioned to make tracks, are now a material trace of his grandfather, a literal vessel of memory. Though just a shoe to anyone else, this item is the only standing relic of his grandfather’s corporeality; the shoes provide the only immediate link to his grandfather’s living physical body and are the bearers not only of narrative but also of human form. This idea of a material trace is something that would come to influence Boltanski’s work for the rest of his career.

If inanimate objects hold memory through trace, perhaps clothing is the most literal bearer of the trace.
Nineteenth century cloth repairers referred to the wear, creases and signs of use in fabrics as ‘memories’ , understanding the importance of their histories. Caterina Albano claims that clothes ‘literalise the notion of embodiment’ through their physicality and presence. It is the fabric’s very materiality, signs of wear, smells, creases and wrinkles that give the garment a character and a bodily presence of its own despite the absence of its owner. ‘Such traces, memories of use and belonging, are what arguably authenticate biographical relics, rendering them ‘true’ to the biographical subject’ . The piece of clothing over time loses its function and utilitarian status as it gains the imprint of human trace. Despite the human comfort found in clothing, there is something macabre about used clothing as an empty vessel: somewhere between the physicality of the cloth and the absence of the owner, we are reminded of death. As Albano illustrates, ‘This tension between presence and absence allows clothes to be both real and a phantom of reality’ . The idea of phantom, illusory, ghost-like, again connotes connotes something that may bring comfort but also terror: it reminds us once again of something unattainable, a presence we cannot see but also cannot detach from. It haunts
us.